Streetscapes/Readers' Questions; A Town House on E. 74th, Fleurs-de-Lis on W. 26th

Q. I found a very detailed article in a scrapbook at the East Hampton, N.Y., library about a town house with a half-timbered facade on East 74th Street. A Jules Pickard commissioned an illustrious American architect to design it but interfered with the design and hated the result when he returned from France. Two years later, he hired another architect to rebuild it in limestone and hated those results too. So he bought a chateau in the Loire Valley and never lived in the 74th Street house. I'm writing a murder mystery, ''Murder in East Hampton,'' where the lead character lives in the former private house, but want to check this information. . . . Nancy Hyden Woodward, East Hampton.

A. It's the kind of far-fetched story you might hear on a walking tour, but the article is not that far off. In 1883, a dye importer, Wilhelm Pickhardt, did build a house at the southeast corner of 74th Street and Fifth Avenue. Born in 1834 in Berghausen, Germany, he studied architecture, intending to follow his father in the profession. But he came to the United States in the 1850's and became more successful as an importer than perhaps a dozen architects combined -- in 1896 his fortune was estimated by The New York Times at $10 million.

Pickhardt's architect, Henry G. Harrison, could hardly be considered illustrious. The Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals, ''The A.I.A. Guide to New York City'' and similar sources do not mention him. He did design a synagogue in Savannah, Ga., and a church in Omaha, and in 1885 he sued Cornelia Stewart, the widow of the merchant A. T. Stewart, for $95,000 in fees for the initial design of the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, N.Y., built by the Stewarts.

In 1893, The Times said that Pickhardt still owned the house, which had been built ''several years ago,'' although the exterior was not quite complete. The account said that ''the owner may (as he has in the past) change the exquisite carving about the windows and cornice to suit his changing mood'' and that it was occupied by only a watchman -- ''the owner, for reasons of his own, has never cared to reside there,'' and often lived abroad. Abroad apparently meant Germany, not France, because Pickhardt's obituary in 1895 said that he had lived in a row house at 13 West 82nd Street until 1893, when ''he had a bad attack of the grip'' and returned to Germany.

An 1896 account in The Times said that Pickhardt had wanted his house ''to eclipse the marble palace of A. T. Stewart'' (at 34th and Fifth, since demolished) and had included features like a $50,000 organ, but that Pickhardt had ''altered his plans and employed new architects and builders. He did this several times, and finally completed the house in 1889 at an expense of $1 million.'' But only the original new-building permit of 1882 seems to have been taken out for the building.

An 1899 photograph shows a house designed in what would at the time have been called the ''Renaissance'' style, with heavy projecting decoration.

The carved relief panels above the windows, and the busts set into the lintels on the second floor, indeed look as if they could have come from the hand of an amateur, but the rest of the house does not seem out of character with other works of the period. The stone seems to be dark, probably brownstone.

The Pickhardt house was demolished in 1916 for the present 927 Fifth Avenue, the apartment building where red-tailed hawks often nest with their young.

Francophiles at Work?

Q. The building on the northwest corner of Fifth and 26th has repeating sculptural decoration of an American eagle atop an American shield. But within the shield, instead of the stars and stripes is a large fleur-de-lis. The upper floors are a spectacular collection of architecture forms and decorations that look like a mixture of the Loire Valley and Notre Dame Cathedral.

This 1910 building, known originally as the Croisic, was named after Richard de Logerot, the Marquis de Croisic, whose Croisic apartment house had been on the site in the 1880's and 90's. Le Croisic is on the west coast of France, seaward of Nantes. A news story about a fire at the building in 1888 listed as residents several show people, including the renowned actor Richard Mansfield. At the time, the building was in the heart of the entertainment district, with Delmonico's and the Cafe Martin at the same intersection.

In 1893, de Logerot lost the building; he died in 1896. He and his wife, Blanche, were once part of Newport, R.I., society, but she later earned her living with a bookstore on Bellevue Avenue in Newport.

In 1909, a developer, Louis M. Jones, bought the corner lot, and his architect, Frederick C. Browne, designed a Loire Valley Gothic/French Renaissance-style building, 20 stories high. The dramatic elegance of what was really just a showroom and loft building turned critics' heads. In 1911, The Real Estate Record & Guide praised the sloping mansard roof, because it ''avoids exposure of tanks and those other protuberances, which disfigure many otherwise handsome buildings.''

In a 1913 critique, the architectural magazine Brickbuilder noted that, with the Croisic and buildings of its class, ''their designers are learning to exercise a little restraint in the matter of design out of consideration for their neighbors, and are endeavoring as far as possible to suppress heavy projections which tend materially to decrease the light area; this suppression of the cornices naturally involves the exclusion of Classic detail.''

The neo-Classical style usually depended on heavy horizontal elements like cornices, and thus the verticality of the Gothic style was a natural adaptation. Even so, the topmost floors were the most valuable for rental purposes, and they were cramped by the sloping mansard. ''Economically the peaked roof cannot be justified, although artistically it appears to be the only satisfactory method yet devised,'' the journal said, referring to similar structures, including the Woolworth Building and 90 West Street.

The Croisic building may have been an architectural success, but there were financial troubles early on, and Jones had to sell off part of his stake within a few years.

Were Jones or Browne French? It's not clear where Browne was born; Jones was born in Germany.

Correction: February 8, 2004, Sunday An answer to a question in the Streetscapes column last Sunday about the 1883 construction of a mansion at 74th Street and Fifth Avenue designed by the architect Henry G. Harrison referred incorrectly to citations in the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. While there are no references to articles about his buildings published during Harrison's lifetime, the index indeed mentions him: it includes both an obituary and a biographical article published in 1982.

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A version of this article appears in print on February 1, 2004, on Page 11011007 of the National edition with the headline: Streetscapes/Readers' Questions; A Town House on E. 74th, Fleurs-de-Lis on W. 26th. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe